One of the challenges of going through the evidence in the Live Nation case is that most of the documents sitting on the docket lack the context needed to understand why the document is relevant or even explain what the document actually says.
That’s why I was surprised when I sent one of the email exchanges to an executive I know and was told “keep that email away from me — that thing is radioactive!”
Looks like I found a winner!
Let’s call this one the Cowboy Brad email, which you can download through the link below in its entirety.
This email is named after the nickname given to Brad Wavra by Irving Azoff in this interesting exchange dating back to 2019. The email begins with an April 12, 2019 email blasted out to arenas looking for interest in an upcoming Jonas Brothers tour.
Sent to arena booking execs, the email announces “Jonas Brothers are back, this is now the real deal. Show will be best of the old Jonas, Nick solo, DNCE solo, and now great new songs. They left as boys and have returned as men (with very famous wives).”
Exciting right? The Jonas Brothers are a hot commodity right, and their song “Sucker” is red hot!
“As we look to lock in this tour,” Wavra writes, “we are going to need $3/ticket outside the deal” and “$1 bump on Ticketmaster.”
WAIT. What the actual f…..
So in order for my hometown arena to book this tour, they need to kick back $3-$4 for every ticket sold on Ticketmaster as a rebate back to the tour? That’s a little shady, isn’t it? No wonder my guy called the email radioactive.
“I wouldn’t necessarily assume that the promoter is going to keep that money,” one source told me, noting “it’s often the band who requests that money. This could be the band saying they want their guarantee plus a cut of the ticketing fees.”
(Spoiler alert — That’s not the case here).
“We are only going to play as many buildings that want this bad enough to deal with above,” Wavra wrote of what would become the Happiness Begins Tour, which stretched from Aug. 7, 2019 to Feb. 22, 2020. The tour in total included 92 dates across the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. If each stop averaged 13,000 fans per show, the $4 rebate generated about $4.7 million extra for the tour.
That’s assuming Wavra successfully implemented the charge because shortly after sending out his email, the industry started reacting. First Eric Gardner at OVG saw the email and forwarded it on to Peter Luukko and others at the company. Luukko then forwarded the email to Irving Azoff, writing “FYI. We have not given any rebates outside the deal to agents and should not start here. Thoughts?”
Azoff then forwarded the message to Bob Roux and Michael Rapino, writing “Cowboy Brad at it again”. And like that, the legend of the Cowboy Brad email was born.
“Buildings are confused on how to respond,” Azoff continued. “I told them I would get guidance from you guys but they are just going to turn around and call their locals for reduction in their Live Nation rebates. Shouldn’t this be handled by you guys just like you do with Eagles?”
The Eagles? Hard to parse what that means, or what kind of deal they had in place for the Eagles. At a minimum, it seems like Irving is saying that if buildings do agree to this $3 to $4 ticket demand, they’ll probably just make it up on the back end with their local Live Nation office and receive a reduction in the rebates they already pay the promoter. As for the “shouldn’t this be handled by you guys” comment, I’m guessing Azoff is saying that these kind of demands should only come from someone really high up, like Roux. Otherwise, keep this stuff internal and stop being so messy.
Ok now this thing has escalated to Rapino who forwards the exchange to Wavra.
“Can’t do these one-off hero asks,” Rapino writes, basically telling him not to send out emails like this. “We drive overall building deals and touring deliver the show — not these big all-email grabs like this.”
That means that the building rebate deals have already been negotiated (I think) and that it’s Wavra’s job to deliver the content and not go fishing around for additional rebates.
“No wonder agents come after us when we are asking for this in email outside the overall arena deal we have in the market?” Rapino writes. I.e.…when we ask for outside money like this the agents sniff it out and think we’re getting rebates on other tours.
Then Wavra responds
“I was never giving this to artist, but did get most buildings saying yes and intended to leave this with the local offices,” Wavra writes. “Did the same on Pink and was never told it was a bad idea.”
Uhhhh….ok. Kind of speaks for itself, right? Wavra is basically looking out for his own P+L here and doesn’t see a problem.
Except there must be some kind of problem since the Department of Justice flagged this email for inclusion in its antitrust civil case against Live Nation.
But we’re not done yet! A second email surfaced in the DOJ files showing a sidebar conversation between Rapino, Bob Roux and Mark Campana.
“I don’t get this Bob,” Rapino writes, “How can we drive a central arena per head charge and then let Touring go rogue asking for 3?”
Seems like Rapino is saying how can our deal with the arenas already have a per head charge for our rebate and then Wavra is out there asking for three bucks a person?
And then Campana jumps in with his own longish email
“I caught wind of this last Friday and Bob went to the touring team yesterday,” Campana writes. “Brad as it turns out not only was asking for more money which he intended on sharing with the artist, he also was attacking the AXS venues to dump AXS and drop in TM. Thus the call you got.”
That’s interesting because earlier, Wavra said he was “never giving this to the artist.”
As for attacking the AXS venue to dump AXS, that sounds like a big no-no since touring is not supposed to be pressuring the buildings about their ticketing systems. Perhaps that is why the DOJ is interested in these emails.
And finally Rapino brings the conversation back full circle. Good talk guys, I’m glad we’re all on the same page here!
